The US defense secretary says the Pentagon will not publicly release video of the September 2 submarine strike
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday that the Pentagon would not publicly release the unedited video of the strike that killed two survivors of the first attack on a suspected cocaine-laden boat in the Caribbean.
Hegseth said members of the US House and Senate armed services committees will have an opportunity this week to review the video, but he did not say whether all members of Congress would be allowed to see it, as the defense policy bill requires it to be released from Congress.
“Of course we will not release the full, complete and unedited secret video to the general public,” Hegseth told reporters as he left a meeting with members of Parliament.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s top national security cabinet officials were on Capitol Hill Tuesday to defend the rapid increase in U.S. troops and deadly submarine strikes in international waters near Venezuela, but left lawmakers questioning the broader goals of the campaign.
Democrats left the Senate hearing saying it was too short and that Trump administration officials seemed unprepared to answer questions.
The Trump administration is facing renewed pressure from some Republican lawmakers who want to reveal the controversial second strike on a Venezuelan drug boat in the Caribbean.
“The administration came to this meeting empty-handed,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. “We don’t know what the main purpose is. The president says different things at different times and contradicts himself.”
Hegseth, along with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others, briefed the House and Senate during a congressional investigation into a military strike in September that killed two survivors. Overall, they defended the operation as a success in preventing drugs from reaching American shores.
Rubio told reporters that the operation is an “anti-narcotics operation” “focused on destroying the infrastructure of these terrorist organizations operating in our region, undermining the security of the American people, killing the American people, poisoning the American people.”
But lawmakers have focused on the Sept. 2 attack on two survivors as they sort out the reason for the U.S. military buildup in the region that appears to be aimed at Venezuela. The night before the launch of the report, the US military said on Monday night it attacked three other boats believed to be smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing eight people.
Senators on both sides said officials left them in the dark about Trump’s intentions when it comes to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro or committing US troops directly to the South American nation.
The shutdown comes as the US builds warships, flies warplanes near Venezuela’s airspace and seizes an oil tanker as part of its campaign against Maduro, who has insisted the real goal of the US military is to force him from office.
Trump’s Republican administration has not sought any authorization from Congress to take action against Venezuela. But lawmakers who oppose military intervention are pushing military power decisions toward a possible vote this week.
The United States has seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, President Donald Trump said on Wednesday, settling tensions with Caracas.
‘He shoots civilians’
All of this raises sharp questions that Hegseth and others will be pressed to answer. The administration’s isolated management style without Congress, experts say, has led to problematic military actions, except for a strike that killed two people aboard a half-collapsed boat in the first attack.
“If it’s not a war against Venezuela, we’re using armed forces against civilians who are just committing crimes,” said John Yoo, a Berkeley law professor who helped build the George W. Bush administration’s legal arguments and the rationale for brutal interrogations after the attacks of September 11, 2001. “Then this question, this concern, really resonates. You know, you’re shooting at civilians. There’s no military purpose to it.”
However, in the first few months, Congress has received little information about why the US military is conducting an operation that has destroyed more than 20 boats and killed at least 95 people. In some cases, lawmakers have learned about the strikes on social media after the Pentagon posted videos of boats bursting into flames.
Congress is now demanding — including language in the annual military policy bill — that the Pentagon release video of that first operation to lawmakers.
For some, the video has become a sample showing the flawed rationale behind the entire campaign.
“The American public should see that. I think that shooting unarmed people wandering in the water, clinging to the debris, is not for us as people,” said Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican who has been critical of the campaign. “You can’t say you’re at war and say, ‘We’re not going to give any kind of due process to anybody and blow people up without evidence,'” he said.
Hegseth told law enforcement last week that he is still deciding whether to release the video.
However, there are also many prominent Republicans who support the campaign. Sen. Jim Risch, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, last week called the attack “completely, completely, and 100 percent legal under US law and international law” and said that many American lives were saved by ensuring that drugs did not reach the US.
But as lawmakers grappled with the details of the September 2 strike, controversy has emerged over the Trump administration’s explanation for the attack, which the Pentagon initially tried to dismiss as a “completely false” story.
To change the mind
Trump said that the drowning that killed the survivors was justified because people were trying to overturn the boat. Many Republican lawmakers have also put forward that argument, saying it shows that the two survivors were trying to stay in the fight, rather than surrender.
However, Adm. Frank (Mitch) Bradley, who ordered the second strike as he was commanding the special forces who were conducting it, admitted in a private forum on Capitol Hill last week that although the two people tried to capsize the boat, it was unlikely that they would succeed. This was said by several people who were in the forums or who had information about them and spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss them.
The two people were riding on top of the overturned boat, not calling on the radio or cell phone for backup and were waving, Bradley told law enforcement. The naval commander consulted with a military lawyer, then ordered a second strike because it was believed that the drugs were on board the boat and the mission was to ensure that they were destroyed.
Are the survivors ‘shipwrecked’?
Experts say the strike appears to be in violation of the Pentagon’s manual of military regulations, which states that “orders to fire on a target would be illegal.”
“The boat was damaged, the boat overturned, and the boat had no power,” said Michael Schmitt, a former US Air Force attorney and professor emeritus at the US Naval War College. “I don’t really care if there was another boat to rescue them. They’re shipwrecked.”
The argument at the heart of Trump’s campaign – that drug arrests in the US are equal to an attack on American lives – has led lawmakers to try to determine whether laws have been broken and, more broadly, what Trump’s intentions are with Venezuela.
In addition to briefings from Hegseth and Rubio on Tuesday, Bradley is expected to appear in a separate hearing with the Senate and Armed Services committees on Wednesday.
Republican Sen. Thom Tillis said he wants to “really understand what action, what intelligence they are doing and whether or not they are following the laws of war, the laws of the sea.”
